Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/considering-expansion-lessons-learned-along-the-way/5022274/
I recently flashed back to a conversation I had almost 15 years ago �" soon after we started Acelero Learning �" with a manager at a Head Start program we were working with at the time. We were coaching this organization to use data effectively, and we had driven their move from paper-based management to an electronic child data management system (which, though hard to believe now, was a challenge). The manager was trying to capture child screening results in the data system and innocently asked how I would define the terms in a specific data field: Does “complete” mean the same as “pass”? Was a developmental screening still “complete” if the child refused to participate, or should that be counted as “failed”?I remember thinking how trivial these questions were. I told her, “As long as you are consistent, just do whatever makes sense to you.”
Flash forward. Today, our organization operates in 40 buildings in four different states with hundreds of employees capturing child data. In a review of child health outcomes, we found disparities across regions that we could not explain. When we burrowed deep into the data, do you know what we found? Our results were different, because ...